Too Blue to Fly — Judith Richards

A sensitively rendered portrait of a biracial family in 1947 Florida, Too Blue to Fly presents a family stretched to its limits. When 11-year-old Wally McManus suffers the loss of his mother to cancer, he must move in with his father, a famous writer and a man he's never met. Arriving in Belle Glade, Wally confronts the stark realities of his new situation: an alcoholic father living with a black woman at the edge of town, a ramshackle house with no modern conveniences, a black half-brother who calls him "Precious," and the prospect of indefinite neglect and ridicule. Abandoned by their guardians to long solitary days, the boys forge an uneasy alliance for the summer. They manage their independence well enough-until they encounter a curious, sexually precocious girl. Sparks fly in a powder keg of race and class, leaving the tenuous freedom of the family and the life of every black person in town in jeopardy.